Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!soi!chip
From: chip@soi.UUCP (Chip Morris)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: #( syntax
Summary: Coral is correct
Message-ID: <432@soi.UUCP>
Date: 12 May 89 14:16:51 GMT
References: <8905120152.AA17406@anaconda.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: Software Options Inc.,  Cambridge,  Mass.
Lines: 24

In article <8905120152.AA17406@anaconda.Stanford.EDU>, 
~rit@ANACONDA.STANFORD.EDU (Jean-Francois Rit) writes:
> 
> I came on a strange, to me, feature of coral common lisp 1.2.1:
> the following expression (setq toto #(1 2 3)) makes lisp return an error
> (cannot eval). However (setq toto '#(1 2 3)) works, and toto is actually the
> right vector object.
> Both formulation work in lucid.
> So what's happening, is the coral implementation wrong? Is it reasonable to
> consider the quoted version a common denominator?

Coral is OK, and so is Franz Allegro.  If a form isn't
self-evaluating, i.e. doesn't return itself as a value, then in
general it must be quoted.  CLtL (Steele) says in section
5.1.1 what the self-evaluating forms are:  numbers, characters,
strings,bit-vectors, () and NIL, as well as all keywords.  So
technically anything else must be quoted, including arrays, vectors,
and structures.  See also "Common Lisp, The Reference", page 665.

-- 
Chip Morris, Senior Engineer
US Mail:  Software Options, Inc., 22 Hilliard St., Cambridge MA 02138
Internet:  chip%soi@harvard.harvard.edu
UUCP:     ...!harvard!soi!chip                   Phone:    (617) 497-5054